


Choosing life

by van22114



Category: Station 19 (TV), Vicley - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 06:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20903366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van22114/pseuds/van22114
Summary: This is my take on Vic's meeting with Jackson. Vicley was goals to me, and I found it so hard to watch the Greys crossover, as I'm sure many of you did. This is my attempt to make myself, and hopefulle some of you, feel a bit better about the whole thing. Not true to the timeline as pointed out to me by Yknotnymph, but this way it's easier to live with...





	Choosing life

It had been almost 5 months since Lucas died, and Vic was drowning. She couldn’t breathe. She felt like she was treading water, only someone had tied a lever to her waist, dragging her down. Like her head was barely breaking the surface, just enough for her to not actually die, but not enough for her to join the living either. The days went by in a blur. She went about her daily routines, making sure everyone could see that she was ok, that she was fine to work, and that she was coping. The truth was that the darkness that had been sourrounding her, it just wouldn’t let go, and she felt like an eternal spectator to her own life. She wasn’t really present in the conversations she had with the people around her. She heard herself speaking, but she wasn’t really there. It was like she was looking at herself from the outside, and sometimes she wondered if this is what it’s like to be dead. If this was what Lucas is doing now. Looking in from the outside, not being able to take part in what used to be his life. Their life…

She hadn’t cried since the week of the funeral. Not even when she was alone. To be honest, she had a hard time feeling anything. Except emptiness and confusion. Sometimes it was even hard for her to tell reality from fantasy. They hadn’t been together for that long, but it had been so intense. It had been so overwhelming. Even if they never got to get married, never had children, never even got to go on a real vacation together, they had done all those things in their minds, in their secret fantasies. It was as if her life before him was a lifetime away, almost hard to remember. And sometimes it felt like it had all been a fantasy, that he and their life together hadn’t been real at all. But then, when she least expectet it, it would hit her like a ton of bricks… a photo memory that popped up on her phone, a shirt that he had left in one of her drawers that had hid in the back only to suddenly appear as she reached for some clean socks, proof that their life together had been real. And that her loneliness and the fact that he had left her for good, was real. But even then, she couldn’t cry. It knocked the wind out of her as effectively as a punch in the gut, it left her paralyzed, but she couldn’t cry. She wondered if she would ever be able to truly feel anything ever again. He had made her feel more alive, more in love, more angry, more hurt, more beautiful, more everything than she had ever thought possible. And then he had disappeared, taking it all with him. And she didn’t know how to go on or where to go from that. But she knew that she had to find a way, because if she didn’t the darkness she was feeling would consume her. It was pulling her in more and more every day, and it felt like she couldn’t trust time to do what it promised. Time was supposed to heal, make the pain duller, take the edge of the grief, and make the good memories come to the foreground. But right now, it felt like time was betraying her. It was pushing her in the wrong direction, and it was taking Lucas even further away from her. She didn’t know how, but she knew she had to do something, to feel something, to make herself choose life instead of death, choose light instead of darkness. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t survive…

When Jackson asked her to have burgers with him, she answered that she liked burgers, and left the door open for another time. She was taken by surprise. She wasn’t in a state of mind to even look at anyone in a romantic way, and the thought of actually going out with someone made her feel sick. But he seemed like a nice guy, and when he called her, she agreed to meet him in the park for lunch. She didn’t tell anyone. She hadn’t really talked to anyone lately, not even Travis. She had shut him out, and even though he never stopped trying, she hadn’t let him in. She hadn’t let anyone in. In a strange way it felt safer to go see someone she didn’t really know, somone who hadn’t known Lucas. And it was surpisingly nice to talk to him. Easy in a way. When he told her that he had just gotten out of a serious relationship, she told him she had to. Her first impulse was to not tell him, but she managed to let her guard down and told him the truth. That she didn’t get out a serious relationship, but that he had died and left her alone in the relationship. The truth was that she was still in it, but he was gone. They talked about a lot of things, and for some reason she managed to talk to him about things that she had been carrying alone for months now. Like how hard it was to live up to the expecations of how you should grieve a loved one. She felt like people were watching her, judging her, and she had no idea what rules really applied for appropriate grief, but she had a feeling she wasn’t meeting everyones expectations. That was also the reason why it had been so much easier to pull away from everything and just disappear. Not be present. She laughed when she told him how it feels like everyone expects you to just be miserable forever. That’s what it felt like. Like she couldn’t smile, couldn’t laugh, couldn’t afford the luxury of for one second forgetting the horrible reality that she lived with every second of every day. Like that would be some kind of betrayal, a proof that she hadn’t really loved him, that their relationship was the dirty little secret many of her colleagues already suspected. 

When she got home after lunch that day, she cried for the first time in months. She realised that it was the first time since she had spoken to Cam at their diner that she had actually said the words out loud. That Lucas was dead. The tears felt cleansing in a way, in a strange way it felt good. For the first time in months it felt like she was able to draw her breath. Not just a shallow breath to barely keep her alive, but a deep down in her lungs breath providing enough oxygen to clear her mind a little bit. And it felt like she was able to pull her head a little bit higher over the surface of the water. Like maybe it could eventually be possible to get back on dry land, and not live her life in the darkness right under the surface.. She didn’t know what part Jackson could play in her life, and to be honest she didn’t really care. But she knew that right now, he may just be the lifeline she needed to pull herself back in. And no matter what anyone might think, Lucas Ripley would forever have a place in her heart, and no one would ever take his place.


End file.
